That was a quarterfinal, but a near-worthy inclusion! Read more

Ping pong match point style! Crush crazy spin serves till you get one in! Read more

This is probably the shadow from a hanging camera, no? (Although a ghost definitely seems more plausible.) Read more

FWIW, this guy's actually a bit of a local celebrity in the DFW area: http://www.wfaa.com/sports/basebal… Read more

I realize these videos constitute an extremely small sample size, but it seems almost all the threes teams get, while wide open, are from 4 feet behind the line. Is that just a quirk of these samples? Read more

For 2003-2013, I used Pomeroy and Sagarin's end-of-year ratings. For 2014, I used their pre-tournament ratings. Read more

I think the thinking behind that is that there are a set amount of automatic bids for conference winners, and there are a set amount of at-large bids for non-conference winners. So those play-in games are for the "last" at-large teams in. Read more

A lot of issues with this: 1. No seeding would make the regular season more irrelevant and pointless than it already is (did a post on this last week http://regressing.deadspin.com/redesigning-th…) 2. The best two teams are even more highly unlikely to meet in the championship under this method. Read more

I thought about using such a metric too, but I figured the extreme misses should have more weight, and the misseedings of a 1 for a 2 should still be factored in. Read more

That certainly would be quite odd, but... a) The odds of that occurring are extremely thin, and b) both KenPom and Sagarin have UConn ranked over 10 slots higher than SMU. UConn simply did much more in their non-head-to-head matchups with the Mustangs. Read more

Would it have been much more satisfying if Wichita State had lost to Kentucky or Louisville a round later? I understand the frustration, but the Shockers still lost, and if the tournament is about finding the best team in the country, then it doesn't *really* matter all that much what round Wichita is knocked out in.… Read more

That's an interesting point. I just checked the numbers on Seeds 14-16 the last five years, and the average error is only .424, so you're right, the committee definitely gets some freebies. Read more

Yeah, so I'm kind of realizing that, haha... I think the bigger takeaway, though, is that no matter how calmly one offers up for consideration a polite concern about a controversial topic online, it's impossible for those those who disagree to civilly dispute it. Read more

If you're going to work somewhere entirely under your own free will, it's not exactly "slave labor." Again, not saying horrible working conditions / employee deaths is good. Just saying that the reverse (thousands of likely starving families with no wages whatsoever) isn't exactly idyllic either, and it's a point this… Read more

If Nepalese workers are willing to work in an environment in which there's such poor conditions and risk for injury/death, though, then that means there are some extremely dire situations back home that require the workers to go out and seek these wages. Obviously, workers dying is awful, but denying jobs to tens of… Read more

Here's all the data if an average team (roughly a 7-8 seed) were placed into each slot (last column is TSP): Read more

If you get to the second paragraph, you'll see why the current format does in fact have some serious issues for college basketball. Read more

That's a very valid concern, but none of these formats would really make betting more difficult. They're still all individual games after all. Plus, in the WC model, not only do you have 2x as many games the first weekend, you also can bet on, say a team winning their pool. Read more

One would intuitively think, but... For an average team slotted in to each part of the bracket, here are there odds of reaching each round:

That would be pretty good too, but the magic of a winner-take-all championship game is pretty fun. (Although, yeah, it's not exactly a good sample size for determining a champion.) Read more